Author Archives: bookdwarf

What started as a brief survey of Boston Globe book review but became way too long

Several years ago, the Globe moved their book reviews into a new section they call Ideas, which starts with articles on non-news topics. Examples from this week are articles on ‘The Hypomanic American’, in which a psychologist argues that America is rich because some Americans are nuts. Many of the articles seem to emulate the style of the Boston Review. The best part is the small section on the bottom of the page 2 and 3 called ‘The Examined Life’ by Joshua Glenn. It usually contains 3 small pieces and often includes interviews with authors. Now, I am not going to review the Ideas part of the section, mainly because I have no expertise when it comes to most of the subjects. Plus the newspaper seems to keep them separate anyway. Even online, the Ideas and the Reviews sections have their own pages (don’t get me started on the Globe’s online web pages).

Regardless, I am here to look at the small review section. The reviews only get 4 pages total. That seems too small right off the bat. But let’s look further. A quick glance shows 6 full reviews, 2 columns covering several books, a ‘Short Takes’ section, A small ‘New & Recommended’ section at the top of page 2, and the weekly ‘Reading Life’ column. That’s it. They include a local bestsellers category next to a small Bookings listing. But you can get more complete coverage of readings from the Boston Phoenix. Frankly, I find the Globe’s review section a bit pathetic. I imagine in its heyday, it might have had better coverage. Alas, we are left with this. Let’s see what books they choose to cover.
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Foer is cooler than I thought

Deborah Solomon has a really nice long article/interview with Jonathan Safran Foer at the NYT. He sounds very nice. Not at all like I thought he would. I imagined him to be pretentious for some reason. Maybe because I imagine all talented people are pretentious. “Why do I write? It’s not that I want people to think I am smart, or even that I am a good writer. I write because I want to end my loneliness. Books make people less alone. That, before and after everything else, is what books do. They show us that conversations are possible across distances.”

Return rant

Doug Seibold has a really passionate article at the Book Standard about the age old practice of returns. Returns let a bookstore feel comfortable ordering large quantities of new titles without fear of being stuck with them. But it hurts the smaller publishers, who have to give discounts of 40% or more to even compete with the larger conglomerates in the first place.
He has some good points, but obviously as a indpendent bookseller, I have problems with the idea of eliminating returns entirely. “As for independent bookstores, their competitive advantage is, and will remain, their ability to find and promote the books their customers are most interested in reading.” Okay, I agree with this statement. We here at Harvard Book Store try to really promote good, solid books, not the latest hyped nonsense. “So perhaps they would be able to take the staff hours they now devote to packing and unpacking boxes of unwanted titles and convert them to more hours spent discovering good books worth hand-selling to customers.” Uhm, what do you mean here? Do you think we actually have time to read at work or something? Handselling is important, but not that many customers want that anymore. Our staff is busy from the time they start their shifts, shelving books, running the registers, answering questions at the info desk. So not unpacking boxes won’t exaclty help you, the small publisher out. At least not here.
I realize I am ranting a bit. And I have no solutions to the many problems of the publishing. Obviously the bookstores need the publishers and vice versa.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

Full disclosure: I must admit that I have not read Jonathan Safran Foer’s first novel Everything is Illuminated, which was such a big deal a few years ago (which also has a movie adaptation starring Elijah Wood and directed by Liev Schreiber coming this August). It’s just one of many books that I have not gotten around to reading. However, I received the ARC of his new book Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and started casually flipping through it. Before I knew what happened I was already deeply engrossed in this brilliant novel.

ELIC follows 9 year old genius Oskar Schell as he travels through New York City in an attempt to find the lock that fits a special key. Oskar found this key while searching through the closet of his father, who was killed on 9/11. In an effort to keep close to the father he idolized, Oskar sets out on this quest. Intertwined in the novel, is the story of Oskar’s grandparents, survivors of the bombing of Dresden in WWII. This second story is not as successful as the main story, but it weaves in nicely at the end as they come together.

Foer uses colored text, photographs and graphics to enhance the story. One of the characters has lost the power of speech (through psychological reasons) and has to write everything in a journal in order to communicate. At one point in the book as his mind gets busier and busier, he begins to run out of room in his journal. So the pages get darker and darker as the text runs together. In another part, the same character tries to talk to someone on the phone by pressing buttons. So we get several pages of numbers. I found this kind of annoying actually. I got the points of these parts, but it felt too contrived and cute in my opinion. The passages with pictures work better. There is one at the very end that works better than if he had written text himself. The pictures have more power than words in that case.

Taking on the collapse of the World Trade Center towers is pretty risky, especially doing so through the eyes and mind of a 9 year old. But the reader can’t help but be charmed by Oskar. Foer manages to capture the train of thought of a boy beautifully. Oskar at times seems as naive as his age implies he should be, but sometimes he seems to know more than he should. His precocity and honesty attract older people, but repel most of the kids his age. This story works despite minor flaws and brought me close to tears several times. At the end, I found myself staring into space, awed by the mind and emotions of a 9 year old.

Hope for the faithful and faithless

Usually people with a deep-felt religion make me want to clap my hands over my ears and sing ‘la-dee-da-dee-da’ loudly. But Jim Wallis, author of God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, sounds okay in my book. He talks about inclusive religion with the folks at Alternet (as opposed to the exclusive relgion of our nation’s leaders).

Lincoln got it right. We don’t claim God’s blessing on our politics and policies. We don’t claim that God is on our side. We worry, we pray, we just always examine ourselves to see if we are on God’s side. And if Lincoln got it right, I think Martin Luther King did it best. With that Bible in one hand and the Constitution in the other hand, he really didn’t pronounce, he persuaded. He didn’t shut people out; he invited everybody in to a moral discourse on politics. And he said we can do better. We can do better than this by our democratic values, by our religious values.

What to read?

I’ve decided to put my fate in your hands, dear reader. I cannot seem to decide on the next book to read. I have too many choices. Here are some of my possibilities:
The Archivist by Martha Cooley
God Lives in St. Petersburg by Tom Bissell
The Orientalist by Tom Reiss
Spice: The History of a Temptation by Jack Turner
Pinkerton’s Sister by Peter Rushforth
The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake

You can see my dilemma here. So you are going to tell me what to read next.